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Category: Tips for Devices

iOS 5 Beta 5: The Future of the iPhone
by LaptopMD+ Posted August 10, 2011 in Apple Devices, Newsletter, TechBuzz, Tips for Devices
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Well, it’s almost time to go back to school and it looks like lucky students who’ve waited patiently may well just get their hands on the iPhone 5 before getting back to class. With the release of iOS 5 Beta 5, it looks like Apple is closer than ever to releasing the new generation of iPhone. If you’ll remember, the hold-up with iOS5 was the major reason for Apple to deviate from their typical summer release schedule for the new iPhone 5. So what’s going on with the 5th iPhone? Let’s see if we can’t break it down a little bit:

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apple, iOS 5, iPad 2, iPhone 5
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Google Music: From the Cloud To Your Ears
by Alex Mouravskiy Posted June 8, 2011 in TechBuzz, Tips for Devices
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Well, it looks like Google’s much-anticipated music streaming service is here. With little fanfare, as with most of their product roll-outs, Google has entered the highly competitive and exponentially growing cloud storage and streaming arena.

Google is no stranger to cloud storage(or at least semi-cloud, since so far most of these services don’t use real cloud technology but instead house the information in traditional data centers). In fact, Gmail has been a de-facto cloud storage service since it’s inception, when it promised to allow significantly more storage space than any other web-based mail service at the time. More recently, Google Docs has been a little-heralded but extremely useful cloud storage service. Though it started by only storing certain file formats, it has recently expanded to allow users to store any file they want on Google’s servers. Google Music is then a natural growth for the company, following a long and well-charted path that the company has been on since the beginning.

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Data (un)Recovery
by LaptopMD+ Posted April 19, 2011 in TechBuzz, Tips for Devices
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In lieu of our more traditional posts, I wanted to share something a little more fun and interesting with all of you today. We get quite a few data recovery jobs coming in to the office: people drop their hard drives, or a power short knocks out their computer, or they accidentally delete their files. Usually, we can do some cyber sleuthing and pull that information right off. And if we can’t do it, we know people who can.

But what happens when you REALLY want to get rid of an old CD? Like that Hannah Montana mix disc you made that you told people was your sisters? Well, sometimes a video is worth a thousand word blog post:

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Just When You Had It Figured Out: Common Computer Maintenance Misconceptions Part 4
by LaptopMD+ Posted March 25, 2011 in Computer Advice, Computer Maintenance, Newsletter, Tips for Devices
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Imagine this is your fan. Except that if your fan looked this bad, your computer would be at risk of exploding at any moment.

It has been a busy week, and as such not a whole lot of time to update, but we’re back and gearing up for our big spring cleaning promotion set to launch Tuesday the 29th. It’s going to be a good one, so stay tuned for more updates. In the meantime, how about another common misconception? This one might just go ahead and contradict the entire premise of this series (i.e. that spring cleaning is just an excuse for a cheap marketing ploy), so it turns out I’m not immune from making these mistakes either. Who knew?

#4: “Spring cleaning is just an excuse for a cheap marketing push. It doesn’t matter when you clean stuff.”

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Spring Cleaning
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Spring Cleaning: Ditch Those Old Devices
by LaptopMD+ Posted March 24, 2011 in Tips for Devices
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Technology is often a double-edged sword: in one respect it innovates and makes past conveniences more useful but at the same time it adds to our own growing collection of personal clutter. If you’re like me old devices end up in a box in the back of my closet or they remain on my shelf collecting dust and cobwebs instead of being thrown out when the latest ‘i-device’ comes out.

The New York Times recently wrote an article recommending which old devices you should throw out that are collecting dust on desks/shelves and in closets all across the city. As they put it, it’s easy to say that “that paper maps and Rolodexes have given way to their digital counterparts” but what about that desktop computer sitting on your desk or the camcorder from 1998 in your closet and what about the books with fading pages on your shelves? Lose it, Lose it and, surprisingly, keep them the Times says and we concur, except maybe on that last one regarding books.

For those in the spring cleaning mode or for those of us not wanting to show up on the next episode of Hoarders, getting rid of your extra/outdated devices will be a good thing. What to do about that alarm clock, GPS Unit, MP3 Player, and cable TV – all of which have been replaced by better modes of technology? Check out the NYT article and come back and tell us which devices you’re going to let go of in the spirit of spring cleaning!
Spring Cleaning
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Just When You Had It Figured Out: Common Computer Maintenance Misconceptions Part 3
by LaptopMD+ Posted March 21, 2011 in Computer Advice, Computer Maintenance, Tips for Devices
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Make sure you don't use your outside vacuum to clean the inside of your computer!

Well, it looks like we inadvertently skipped a day on Friday. The construction we’ve had going on for over a week now required us to move stuff around and the blog post became a casualty of time. But never fear, we will persevere. Stiff upper lip and carry on and all that. Today, we’re looking at the second part of the compressed air myth, and hopefully teaching you a little more science. Because, you know, Science!

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computer cleaning, computer preventive maintenance, laptop maintenance, Spring Cleaning
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Just When You Had It Figured Out: Common Computer Maintenance Misconceptions Part 2
by LaptopMD+ Posted March 16, 2011 in Computer Advice, Computer Maintenance, Tips for Devices
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This is NOT for cleaning your computer. Remember: Oxygen + Spark + Dusty Air = Inferno Tornado!

And we’re back for another exciting installment of the column where we learn that things we thought we know are actually wrong. Today, we’ll tackle a…well, not so much a misconception as an incomplete thought, centering on removing the dust and gunk form inside your computer case. And I hope you’re reading this outside on your laptop in a park, because missing this gorgeous day would be a crime worse than my occasional butchering of the English language.

#2: “You should open your case up every couple of months and spray it out with canned air. You can pick the stuff up for dirt cheap at the .99c store!”

Personally, I love compressed air. I remember as a kid turning the can upside down and pushing the trigger in real slow and watching the rapidly condensing moisture fall and his as the expanding air caused a sharp and rapid drop in temperature. It’s actually another common misconception that the liquid that comes out is whatever chemicals have been stuffed into the can, but it’s actually just the microscopic water particles in the air condensing around the nozzle. The air coming out of the can expands so rapidly that (as we learned in high school chemistry) it causes the air to cool. The reason this isn’t noticeable unless you push the trigger in slowly is that with more force, the cold air moves too fast to cause a noticeable temperature drop since the cold is spread out over a larger area. The more you know! ⌂

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computer cleaning, computer preventive maintenance, laptop maintenance, Spring Cleaning
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Just When You Had It Figured Out: Common Computer Maintenance Misconceptions Part 1
by LaptopMD+ Posted March 15, 2011 in Computer Advice, Computer Maintenance, Tips for Devices
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With daylight savings time catching us by surprise, and the temperatures here in NYC hovering right around 50, it’s finally safe to say that spring has almost sprung. There go those lift-passes I hadn’t had time to use. Oh well. And with spring just about here, we will soon be inundated with the usual flood of “Spring Clean Your Computer!!” articles, in which overly-peppy reporters who can barely turn on

I turned my computer upside down and all my files fell out! Now I need to defrag the floor!

their Powerbooks talk to an “expert” (usually, the only BestBuy employee who couldn’t invent a plausible excuse fast enough) about things that they don’t quite understand themselves and then string the words together in a way that makes things easy to understand but is generally pretty much completely wrong. Don’t you worry, we’ll get to the spring cleaning fever ourselves, but first we thought it might be helpful if we took a minute to dust off the shelves of conventional wisdom and common knowledge, pulled out the clutter of outdated truisms and unsubstantiated rumor, and replaced them with the bright, shiny, polished trophy of truth and accurate information. So without further ado, here is a list of the top 10 computer maintenance misconceptions and downright falsehoods, presented as a daily series (that’s right, you have to wait a day between tips):

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computer preventive maintenance, laptop maintenance, Spring Cleaning
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AirPhone No 4: Counterfeit iPhone Spotted
by LaptopMD+ Posted March 11, 2011 in Apple Devices, Buying Guides, Tips for Devices
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This is NOT a real iPhone

It used to be fake Oakley sunglasses, or Foakleys as they were commonly called. Then came the knock-off Louis Vouiton, Prada, and Coach bags. Now, we at LaptopMD+ have captured the next level of counterfeits being peddled on Craigslist, Ebay, and in shady shops along Canal St.: The counterfeit iPhone4.

It’s not a new problem by any means. In fact since the very first iPhone came out, eBay has had their work cut out for them trying to single out and shut down counterfeit operations. Those early fakes were obvious, and anyone who received one knew right away that what they paid for was not an authentic Apple product. But the counterfeiters, many working with factories in China, many employing the same people that were former employees of the very factories that Apple itself uses to make iPhone components, have learned and improved. We recently had a counterfeit iPhone 4 cross our desks, and even our techs had difficulty telling it apart from the real thing on first sight.

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counterfeit technology, fakes, iPhone4
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How is Your Laptop Like Felix Ungar? They Both Work Best When Things Are Clean.
by LaptopMD+ Posted February 10, 2011 in Computer Advice, Computer Maintenance, Tips for Devices
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From late-night Cheeto-powered gaming to breakfast-sandwich-in-hand commuter computing, laptops attract a lot of dirt, dust, crumbs, and various other bits of their owners’ debris. Add to that the air circulation system inside your computer, usually powered by at least one fan, and it’s tendency to suck in dust faster than Hoovering the Sahara, and you have a recipe for a mess inside your laptop. Not surprisingly, computers don’t like this at all. From dust clogging the fan and causing your system to run hot (which burns out critical components VERY quickly) to sticky liquids causing shorts or acting as magnets for other dirt, a messy laptop can cause all sorts of very expensive problems. You would not believe how many customers bring us their computers only to discover that all of their problems could have been prevented with a good cleaning now and then.

Luckily for you, several of our brave computers have agreed to undergo surgery so you can see how it’s done.

Victim #1: An EeePC Ready for Cleaning

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Laptop cleaning, laptop maintenance, Laptop Tips
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Category: Tips for Devices

#4: “Spring cleaning is just an excuse for a cheap marketing push. It doesn’t matter when you clean stuff.”

#2: “You should open your case up every couple of months and spray it out with canned air. You can pick the stuff up for dirt cheap at the .99c store!”